Fiona Monbet, Ensemble Miroirs Etendus - Chassol-Reich (2026) [Hi-Res]

The Paris-based contemporary music group Ensemble Miroirs Étendus, rooted in the Hauts-de-France region and led by violinist Fiona Monbet, works at the border of the written and the improvised, the acoustic and the electronic. Its new programme is built as a dialogue between two cities and two composers. At its core is City Life (1995), a key work by Steve Reich, a New Yorker born in 1936 and a pioneer of minimalism, whose path led from phasing music and its phase-shifting technique to rhythm, pulse and multimedia forms. City Life is a sound reportage on Manhattan assembled from sampled engines, horns, brakes and alarms; two keyboardists trigger recorded fragments of speech and noise live on stage, which made the piece a technological turning point for Reich.

To give this work a mirror reply, the ensemble turned to Christophe Chassol, a French composer, director and musician who composes music around recorded voices, birdsong and street sounds. His method, the ultrascore, involves filming and recording speech and everyday noise, then building music on top of them. He has applied it in the United States, India, Martinique and Japan; his fifth album, Funny How?, came out in May 2026, and his collaborators include Frank Ocean, Solange, Sébastien Tellier and the visual artists Sophie Calle and Xavier Veilhan. For this project, Chassol turned his method on Paris, the city where he lives. The result, Paris Noir, sits alongside City Life as a pair of sound-portraits of restless, changing metropolises, united by social awareness and an appetite for music that responds to its moment.

The concert, with Chassol performing in person, is punctuated by a piece from his album Big Sun, Reich & Darwin, a personal tribute to Reich, whose music first sparked his fascination with repetitive forms.

Tracklist:
1. Fiona Monbet, Ensemble Miroirs Etendus - City Life I - Check it out
2. Fiona Monbet, Ensemble Miroirs Etendus - City Life II - Pile driver - Alarms
3. Fiona Monbet, Ensemble Miroirs Etendus - City Life III - It's been a honeymoon - Can't take no mo'
4. Fiona Monbet, Ensemble Miroirs Etendus - City Life IV - Heartbeats - Boats & buoys
5. Fiona Monbet, Ensemble Miroirs Etendus - City Life V - Heavy smoke
6. Fiona Monbet, Ensemble Miroirs Etendus - Paris Noir I - Présentation Répétition
7. Fiona Monbet, Ensemble Miroirs Etendus - Paris Noir II - Césaire raconte Sib
8. Fiona Monbet, Ensemble Miroirs Etendus - Paris Noir III - Himes, Baldwin, Wright
9. Fiona Monbet, Ensemble Miroirs Etendus - Paris Noir IV - Césaire raconte Do
10. Fiona Monbet, Ensemble Miroirs Etendus - Paris Noir V - Sorbonne
11. Fiona Monbet, Ensemble Miroirs Etendus - Paris Noir VI - Césaire raconte
12. Fiona Monbet, Ensemble Miroirs Etendus - Paris Noir VII - Césaire raconte zeuhl
13. Fiona Monbet, Ensemble Miroirs Etendus - Paris Noir VIII - Rubato
14. Fiona Monbet, Ensemble Miroirs Etendus - Paris Noir IX - Le Paris Noir contemporain